However guitarist Nick McCarthy has explained why the group did not go pop and instead worked with Dan Carey on the soon-to-be released ‘Tonight: Franz Ferdinand’ .

“It never really took off to be honest – we only went down there and recorded one song in the end,” he said. “We thought it’d be great to collaborate with a total ‘pop’ producer but we realised pretty quickly that it’s not our world; we’re not really a ‘pop’ band. But we took some great things away from it, I really enjoyed working with Brian [Higgins], he’s an amazing guy.”

He added that the way they ended up making the new record was completely different to anything they would have done with Higgins.

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McCarthy said of the final album sessions: “That process was quite intense, but also quite playful; we had a lot of time to experiment, whereas it would have been a very strict time schedule [with Xenomania].”

He concluded: “I don’t really give a shit [if the new tracks sound good in arenas], it should just be good music, not written especially for big places. I think that’s a terrible idea.”

Franz Ferdinand‘s new album, the follow-up to 2005’s ‘You Could Have It So Much Better’, will be released on January 26.